Online Trends in Advertising and Marketing

2009 is definitely a challenging year for many businesses as many of them try to stay afloat despite the global economic slowdown. We are going to review some online trends that are already being used by businesses as they struggle to grow and maintain their presence online. Some of these advertising internet marketing online strategies are ahead of their time and may likely be adapted by many businesses years to come.

One of these trends is the continuing keyword inflation. As the marketplace moves toward digital, it can be expected that the internet will become increasingly crowded. This ensuing demand will result in paid search costs going up. Cost-per-click inflation will likely continue to go up. As a result of this, the advertising internet marketing online community will concentrate on improving conversion rates if it is to offset the keyword inflation. This move towards improving return on investment by offering end-to-end optimization will best be achieved by controlled testing. Such things as click-tracking and eye-tracking projects will become defaults and a necessity within any website improvement programme.

As the recession bites, online behavior will be shaped by consumer thrift. Most consumers continue to shop online for deals and bargains and will likely continue to do so. So auction sites and ad listings will see their traffic rocket despite the downturn. Since retention of market share is considered crucial during a downturn, advertising internet marketing online businesses will need to be aggressive by offering incentives and shaping consumer perceptions to keep them coming. To achieve this, great creativity will be required. Landing pages will need to be user-friendly, disruptive advertising strategies will need to be employed and websites will need to be trustworthy.

Advertising internet marketing online players will also need to use qualitative date in analytics and decision making to understand not only what website users are doing, but also why they are doing what they are doing. Such things as user surveys, internal search analysis, email questionnaires, FAQ feedback, user complaints, customer service forms, A/B and Multivariate testing, eye tracking and click-density analysis are going to be essential tools in optimizing return on investment. The information gathered from these analyses will be used in making decisions on optimization with a much greater certainty. Localized services will also see remarkable growth since they result in more relevant search results, more accurate targeted advertising can be done and search advertising internet marketing online search networks will get massive additional inventory to sell at a more local level. Undoubtedly, these marketing trends will shape future online behavior.